Given Willard Romney's constant taste-testing of his own feet, he must have athlete's tongue by now -- unless he has a protecting coating in there from enzymes produced in perpetual flip-flopping and the steady mouth-and-truth-stretching exercises from his incessant lying.

At least Paul Ryan adds some balance to the ticket: When Willard is prevaricating, Paul can pick up the mantle of flat-out lying; when Paul is dissembling, Willard can maintain his forked tongue.

The two men must also be pro golfers, based on all the great lies they regularly produce with all their balls. And, as each man has at least one hole in his head, it appears they will be content to be scored as a hole in two.

In fact, there's so much manufacturing of reality out of whole cloth here, the candidates might be opening a mattress factory or, maybe, a sofa plant, so that their badly battered laurels can get plenty of rest.

With the industrial quantities of fabrication going on during the campaign, there should be plenty of Lie-O-Pedic box sets and more than enough Cray-Z-Boy recliners to meet declining demand.

Now that Willard's keen, razor-honed diplomatic skills have been on proud display on the world stage once more -- this time testing China's patience in suffering fools not at all gladly -- we can all rest assured that Armageddon is right around the corner.

"What a bump the economy would get from a Third World War!" said campaign foreign affairs advisor Wayne Scotting. "At least for a little while -- one or two days, maybe."

In the meantime, the campaign will continue to hammer China's currency policy, while China continues to point out the irony of Willard biting the hand of the country that has fed him so many millions of personal dollars.

Scotting said the campaign is pleased with the way things are going. "Our global 'Insult-A-Palooza' Tour is going better than we could have hoped. Even if we're not able to visit each and every one of these little yahoo-backwaters of a country between now and November 6, we plan on maintaining a vigorous schedule of insulting friends and enemies all over the world, and without showing favoritism -- just despising everyone equally."

"We plan to keep shaking things up, get noticed, and take advantage of any fallout we can," Scotting explained, "especially in the powder-keg Middle East -- for example, those dimwits in Iran offer us plenty of easy diplomatic opportunities."

"You have to admit, it took real genius to alienate America's best friends and allies, over there in the UK," Scotting confided. "Although we have a surprise push planned for France, too, especially now that people know Willard spent time there, instead of Vietnam."

"Not only that, but we have a couple of surprises in the works for the moronic North Koreans by the end of October, at the latest," Scotting promised, "bomb or no bomb."

"After all, anyone can insult or offend America's worst enemies, like the idiot Chinese or the butt-ugly Russians, but it takes a deep understanding of human nature to permanently piss off all of your friends."

Meanwhile, on the domestic scene, the campaign will be getting a shot in the arm, according to national campaign director, Anna Morfic.

"We're setting up special Campaign Rationale Centers (CRACs) all around the U.S., in towns of as few as ten or twelve voters. We tell volunteers to think of the CRACs as 'ComMITTment Renewal Zones.' These will be like 'fire stations' for our combined storm trooper and cheerleading squads, to help pump up the voters and get them all rousted out in time," Morfic explained.

"We have to get people fired up and get their asses into the voting booths, no matter what," she added. "We can't rely on voting machine hacks by our crack team of seventh-graders, and we sure can't rely on SCOTUS again to pull our chestnuts out of the fire -- although, thank God, we have billions in our dirty-tricks funds, thanks to Citizens United."

Morfic said the CRACs will attempt to offset negative campaign publicity and bolster flagging support of candidates by providing GOP voters with a list of reasons to help them want to continue living, post-election, as well as administering and refreshing long-term, hypnotic vote-therapy sessions for all sane or wavering Republicans.

Director Morfic added, "You can think of our little CRAC-houses as brainwashing centers if you like," she said with a smile, "but we're not doing anything Goebbels didn't do. We're leaning heavily on emotional appeals to voters, like always, which boils down to fear and racism again this election. It's what you do when your team has nothing of substance to offer."

Morfic said, with a wink, "Besides, if you get your brain washed at the CRACs, you won't get charged extra for fluffing and folding, or for the little niceties, like getting all your shirts stuffed at the same location.

"Plus," Morfic added playfully, "we'll make sure no starch is added -- all our members in the GOP already have way too much highly inflexible starch of their own."